How to install and play Half-Life 2: Offshore (and other mods) in Synergy

Have you ever joined a server and got an error message telling you you are missing Offshore or another missing mod? or do you just want to play a custom campaign with your friends? well I'll do my best to explain to you how to install and play it on Synergy.

I strongly recommend first installing Offshore using the more accurate instructions I provided, once you install one mod, installing other mods becomes easier and more self-explanatory, because I cannot make a guide for every HL2 mod in existence, the steps I provide might not be of much use to the mod you are trying to install.

Downloading the necessary files.

Before you do any of this, make sure you have both Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 downloaded and installed(and bought if you haven't already) as it is required for this mod to work properly and to join any servers running this mod

Offshore and many other mods can't be downloaded off steam and has to be downloaded and installed manually.
You'll need to download the main campain: here
and the 2013 patch here
once both downloaded, go and download another patch of the steam workshop here so you won't have ERROR floating everywhere.
that's all you need for Offshore.

For other mods,
First off, some mods require you to not only own HL2, but also the episodes, not all, but most do, check which episodes you need on the mod page.
Balimbanana has made many mod support patches for synergy and you can find a huge collection of Mod Supports here
some workshop pages contain a link to the mod in which case you can easily follow that link and download it that way.
If the workshop page doesn't contain one, a quick google search will usually do the trick, many mods can also be found on www.moddb.com.
make sure to download the main mod, any patches the mod might have, and the mod support Balimbanana has made, if Balimbanana didn't make a mod support for the mod you wanna play, you can skip that step, but the mod might not work (properly) with Synergy.
Some mods seem to mod the game so heavily you cannot play it with Synergy either way, an example of this is "Gordon Freakman".

Installing the mod itself.

For Offshore:
if all goes well you should have 2 zip files downloaded.one named Offshore.zip and one named Offshore_Fix_04_16_16.zip

1a. go ahead and open Offshore.zip
I hope my native language won't be too confusing now open up your "sourcemods" folder, located in "[INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]/steam/steamapps/"
In my case it already is installed. but yours would be empty or maybe have other source mods
copy the Offshore folder from Offshore.zip to sourcemods(see above image)

2a. now you need to open up Offshore_Fix_04_16_16.zip
now open up the only folder named Offshore_Fix_04_16_16
like before, drag Offshore into the sourcemods folder and tell it to replace any already existing files.

3a. restart steam and launch the new game called "Offshore", it will download SDK 2013, wait for it to finish,

4a. go to Library>tools and right-click SDK singleplayer 2013, click properties, beta and opt in the beta.






For other mods:
1b. Many mods are packaged in a similar way to offshore,

In this example I have the Precursor mod downloaded,
this mod only consists of 1 .7z file, for some mods you might also have downloaded a patch.

2b. open up the main mod (not the patch if there is one!).

in it you can see a folder with the name of the mod, put this file in your sourcemods folder located in "[INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]/steam/steamapps/".

3b. if the mod has a patch, you need to put that in sourcemods as well. if not, you can go to the next step.
If the mod has a patch, open up the patch file you have downloaded, in it there should be a folder with the name of the mod, put this in sourcemods and tell it to overwrite any files.

4b. Restart steam and launch the new game, it will download SDK 2013, wait for it to finish,
go to Library>tools and right-click SDK singleplayer 2013, click properties, beta and opt in the beta.
[See the images at step 4a.]
This step is only needed the first time you install a mod.

if the mod is packaged differently and you can't figure out what you have to put where, feel free to message me and I will try to update the guide

Installing the Synergy patch

For Offshore:
On the workshop page it already explains how to do it but I'll explain it anyways,
simply subscribing to the addon won't work, it requires some additional work to be done.

5a. first, you need to go to "[INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\17520" and copy a folder named 647127451


6a. Then, we go to the synergy custom folder located "[INSTALLATION DIRECTORY]Steam\steamapps\common\Synergy\synergy\custom" and paste it here,

For Other mods:
On the workshop page it already explains how to do it but I'll explain it anyways,
simply subscribing to the addon won't work, it requires some additional work to be done.
on the workshop page it mentions 2 important details, weather you have to do anything, and what you have to do if you do have to do something.
in the example of the precursor mod support workshop page, it says subscribing to the mod is enough. If the mod you are trying to play also only requires you to subscribe, then that's it.
If the mod requires you to copy files, then you must look which files you have to copy, on the mod support page it tells you this, just follow the instructions 1a - 2a but instead of the folder "647127451" you must copy-paste whichever folder is mentioned on the mod support workshop page.

Some mods don't have a mod support made, in this case, just skip this step and hope that the mod can be played without errors.

That's it.

ps. On the workshop page it says people with Synergy 4.3 beta don't need to do this.

On a sidenote...

This is my first guide, EVER, feel free to give feedback and stuff,
I made this guide because of the amount of people who tried to join my server only to be kicked out a second afterwards for not having the files, and because I was bored... Also, please excuse any spelling mistakes I might have made, my native language is Dutch.
credit to Balimbanana for the 2 in-game images, I hope he doesn't mind me using them...

[Chirp]

Stupid Face(s)

[Chirp]

SEE?